Deke [Slayton], I’ve spent a month now at flight school, have flown fifteen hours and soloed, and after much soul-searching, I have decided to resign… - Brian O'Leary

This situation is intensified by the fact that, in spite of the appearance of polluted cities of the Third World, the United States continues to lead the way in exploiting the environment. With only five percent of the world’s population, we Americans consume one-fourth of the world’s energy and one-third of its raw materials. I am not proud of this. My own sense of grief is especially heightened by the fact that I am a citizen of the leading polluter nation, as well as being an individual member of a supposedly sentient species which is causing the greatest mass extinction since that of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Most of us are complacent, distracted or conveniently ignorant, in part because of the overwhelming depth of the situation. As Walt Kelly’s Pogo said, “We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us!”

What I am suggesting is the indefinite postponement of the space shuttle program, a reduction in excessive NASA management costs and the establishment of a moderate unmanned space program emphasizing space science and applications. I believe all this can be done with an annual budget of less than $2 billion. <p>How about changing the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston into the National Energy Research Center?

Interviewer at astronaut interview: Dr. O’Leary, would you submit to a hazardous two-year journey to Mars?
O’Leary: Whew. A two-year trip to Mars. I must admit that I haven’t given it much thought. Are you serious?
Interviewer: Sure we’re serious. You’re twenty-seven years old, you could be an astronaut for twenty years and within twenty years we could be sending men to Mars. And Mars is your field of specialty, isn’t it, Dr. O’Leary?